


I'll take care of you (if you ask me to)

by AnnieMar



Category: Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery, Anne with an E (TV)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Book-inspired, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Lizzie & Darcy-inspired, also anne likes to tell stories, communication saves lives, communication through stories, season 3 spoilers be here, show-realm
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-15 09:50:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21251450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnieMar/pseuds/AnnieMar
Summary: Picture it. Avonlea. Edwardian era. Gilbert Blythe is on death's door from fever and Anne Shirley-Cuthbert needs to make him understand a thing or two. Mainly that he shouldn't go and die on her, because she loves him. #shirbert





	I'll take care of you (if you ask me to)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a new fandom for me, hello! I'm anniemar ;-) I've been hanging out and reading a lot of y'alls fics around these parts and feeling a certain type of way and all up in my feels and all that fun stuff. 
> 
> So I blame tumblr for this particular fic and the gifsets comparing 'Anne with an E' to 2005 'Pride and Prejudice'. I simply had to write a story around (spoiler alert) putting Gilbert into a certain epic Mr. Darcy scene. 
> 
> And so this is for all the fans who've had a rough go of it lately. Sometimes it's nice to be reminded what's endgame, and in one of the only ships that's pretty much guaranteed to be endgame, it still hurts sometimes. OH THE ANGST, oh the slow-burn from hell. 
> 
> This is definitely Anne from the show-verse, weaved into a situation inspired from the book-verse. I allude to certain events, though I have zero idea how the show will handle these things, so it's possibly spoilery. Though I'm guessing we all pretty much know the main beats from the books. 
> 
> I also make reference to the ancient myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. It's all sorts of tragical, just like Anne loves. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy. Because I've never written anything this fluffy or non-E-rated in my fic-writing existence and I am loving it ;-)

**~~*...*~~**

"Do you want to hear a story, Gil?" 

Anne didn't know if he could hear her or not. The fever had weakened him terribly, and he slept, a hard sleep, his rattled breathing shallow, with the genuine possibility that it would stop forever. She stood looking down at him, not able to sit, not able to relax. Tears welled up, and her vision became blurry, looking at his closed eyes. The slight darkness surrounding them had always been beguiling, perhaps hinting at the warmth there, a bit of mischief. Now the darkness was so much more pronounced, deepening in his illness, making his contours look hollow, dark as death. He was almost like a wraith in the lamplight. He was far too thin, skeletal, and she thought that trend must have started before the fever. No one lost that much weight in such a short amount of time. What had been his state of mind? 

She should have been here. She should have been a lot of things. 

As soon as she'd heard … a passing mention while chatting with old friends, with her back in Avonlea for a time … "Did you hear? Gilbert Blythe is on death's door. Typhoid fever. The doctor has no hope"… nothing else mattered. She'd ran. Anne hadn't had contact with him in months, and yet she ran. Nothing else in the world existed, she didn't rest until she was on his porch, knocking on his door. Bash opened it, looking ghostly, had that look on his face, resigned. Bracing himself to lose another person so dear. He hadn't slept in days, the doctor had left saying he'd be back but was not hopeful. Bash had gathered her up, embraced her as if no time had passed between them. She listened to his story of the state of things and sent him to bed. 

"I'll take care of him," she said. Bash had believed her, said no one could do a better job. She'd take care of him that night. She'd take care of him forever. 

She took off her hat and jacket, trying to will herself to calm down. Her frantic energy would be a disservice to him. She walked to the window and looked outside. The sun had set, but there were still streaks of burgundy and purple across the sky, the dusk fading into night. 

Her fingers ran across the edges of the lace of the curtain. "I'll tell you a story," she announced, more to herself than to him, vowing to tell the whole tale. "This is my own Book of Revelation. My reveal. To the end of me, laid bare, all of it. You deserve that, but even more so, I want you to hear it if you can. Know it's real."

She turned back towards him and gave a laugh. "And I promise this isn't about me. Not really. It's for you." The momentary smile on her face vanished. "It's about you and how I've loved you. The journey of it." 

Anne walked over to finally take a seat in the chair beside his bed. "You always did push yourself, didn't you? Right up to the edge of the cliff. You wanted to win fair and square … but this isn't fair, Gil." 

She reached out to feel his forehead with the backs of her fingers. Still much too warm. "I should have said … 'I'll take care of you, if you ask me to, in a year or two,'" she mused. "There was still so much I needed to understand about myself." 

Anne sat back and put her hands in her lap, thinking of his proposal, even though it was painful, she had to. "That day … in the orchard. You see, I had convinced myself we'd be Orpheus and Eurydice. We were too expected. Too perfect a thing to let live. Knowing me, I'd traipse through the forest with tree nymphs and get bitten, sent to the underworld. Of course, you'd find me there, make a deal to release me … but would you trust me to follow you through the void? Or would you look back? It haunted me. In my dreams, or nightmares really, you doubted me, you always looked back, trapping me with Hades forever. Maybe I never gave you enough of a reason to trust me." 

She shook her head, a tear falling. "I was always caught up in stories and ideals and adventure. It's how I coped, Gilbert, for as long as I can remember." 

She sniffed back more tears and stood, walking back to the window. "I fancied myself the bride of 'adventure,' sure that 'he' would take me on. 'Adventure' would be happy to have me. Real love, I've only seen a brushstroke of it here and there. I certainly never saw it when I was little. I only read about it in fantastical tales in literal pieces and scraps of storybooks, so I've been so slow at recognizing it. I always loved the tragical romances, as those were the only ones I could really feel. I knew those. I could believe them. They were familiar to me. How could I see when the real thing was looking right at me? To me, _ real _ was tragic. How could I ever see you as tragic? You were my friend, the best of friends. Intellectual equal. A kindred spirit, something I was allowed to have." 

She gave a sigh, her arms crossing over her stomach, an attempt to hold herself up, to force her to keep going. 

"It all seems so random at times, or is there some grand design? Does wanting so much and actually receiving it, essentially doom you? My own parents must have loved each other … and they died, after sailing across the ocean, having me, and for a moment ... they must have thought they'd made it. And Ruby … no one wanted to love as fiercely as she did." Anne gave a laugh, remembering. "As children, she even forbade me from speaking to you because of her ferocity. Years later, she gave me an old handkerchief she'd made, with the initials G.B., passing the torch I suppose, before hers went out. She knew." 

"For Matthew and Marilla, love slipped through their fingertips. Bash and Mary held onto it for but a few breaths. Miss Stacey … her love is in her memory, a shrine, locked away in a trunk. Aunt Josephine faired well in life, a love so grand that it filled all the great rooms in her huge house, like fresh-cut flowers. You can feel it in its corners if you close your eyes, it feels like … _home_. But even then, it's only for a moment, a heartbeat, and her love is now a stack of novels on their bedside table. It's in a story of a Parisian bookshop. A great tale that can only be spoken of between the lines. Tragical romance, yes, but on purpose. They loved on purpose." 

Anne walked back to the chair and sat once again. She took a deep breath before speaking again. 

"I had once thought it was all accidental, because how could you love me? My first memories are of being told … I'm not worthy. If you're told a thing enough times, you start to believe it. Did you know they say it's easier for children to learn whole other languages than it is for adults? It's why Gerry is bilingual, and his parents never learned English. Little ones, they remember. They absorb so much. I learned a narrative, it seeped into my very being. I was an orphan, homely, not enough this, not enough that … and then too this, too that. I could never win. So I created my own narrative on top of theirs. One day I'd find kindred spirits along the way, but never the fairytale, never a soulmate, there wasn't one created for me to begin with, you see. Best resign myself to being the bride of adventure. So you might understand why I always thought your love was accidental. Maybe a crush you didn't understand. Or a fleeting fancy. And a torment for me in the end. You couldn't actually love me when the whole world told me that was impossible."

She lifted her chin in the old way she used to steel herself in moments of doubt. "My only possibility was adventure, and it afforded much more scope for the imagination than the boring old tale of marriage to a man. Keeping a house. Having supper on the table. 'Oh, that story again. I've heard that one over and over,' I said. 'I want to write a new one. I want to cultivate a life, not a routine. I don't care who does or does not choose me'. You see, I started to believe my own stories. Half-truths. And that's the thing with creating your own narrative, I realized too late that I always had the power to revise it once I'd written it, to take out this bit and add another. It never had to be etched in stone." 

Anne leaned forward, her voice lowering as if revealing a deep dark secret. "I realized it was all nonsense Gilbert, because then it happened. I stared into the fire one night, and 'adventure' spoke to me. 'I do choose you,' he said. "To be loved, Anne, and to love in return, is a _great adventure_, for it's as frightening and exhilarating as jumping off that cliff. To love is to know loss, pain, and to walk into the fire anyway, to scale that unknown mountain for the experience, the journey, for the view. It's cultivating a life with a partner-in-crime, a kindred spirit … on purpose! I know you loved me on purpose. And I love you, with my eyes wide open now. I am awake!"

She realized that tears were streaming down her face, dripping, falling down her chin, but she didn't care. "Please don't go to sleep now forever. I love you. I've _always_ loved you, and if you drift away from me in this life, I'll love you for all of the days through oceans of time. I love you." 

She forced a smile through the tears and took his hand. "Our love could fill a huge house like fresh-cut wildflowers, a house as big as Aunt Jo's, all the rooms, up to the ceilings, so much so that even when we're gone, it would still exist in its corners years later so that whoever enters the house will always feel at home. I'll write our story, not between the lines but out in the open, our love will fill the pages of a whole stack of novels on our bedside table, timeless. I'll write it even if I only see you on this day, and I'll write it if I see you for the rest of my days."

She bent to kiss his hand, a teardrop or two falling onto his fingers. His hands would always be familiar to her as they seemed to always be there. To help her up, offer comfort, to dance, to brush an errant strand of hair behind her ear. At this moment, his hands were a little too cold, but for the first time that night, she felt his fingers give a weak squeeze back, making some semblance of a sign that he knew she was in the room with him. 

She looked up and smiled. "I'm here, Gil. I'm going to take care of you." 

After sunrise, Bash quietly opened the door and stepped inside, finding her still awake, still keeping vigil. She was sitting in the chair, leaning over and resting her arms and head on the bed next to Gilbert's legs. She'd been up all night tending to him, even ready to stuff onions in his socks to bring the fever down. 

Bash lay a hand on her shoulder. "Anne. You need to sleep, I'll keep watch now, the doctor will be here soon." 

Anne slowly sat up, her muscles aching, the fog of sleep deprivation making her movements graceless. She blinked several times, trying to chase out the unpleasant haze. 

She looked up at Bash, the worry was still in his eyes, but he was rested and relieved that Gilbert had survived the night. It was his time now, time for brothers. 

"You'll notify me if anything changes? You'll send someone?" 

He nodded his head immediately. "Of course." 

She stood and bent over to lay a kiss on Gilbert's forehead, giving his hand a squeeze. His features stirred for the first time in hours, and his eyebrows gave a slight furrow. A much-muted version of the expression he always held when she ran from him. It broke her heart, but she smiled softly, reaching her fingers up to gently smooth his brow and the lines in his forehead, which was perhaps a bit cooler now to the touch. 

"Shhh," she whispered in his ear. "Don't go getting that look on your face, because in this particular story, _I'm_ Orpheus and _you_ are Eurydice. So the outcome will be different, you see. Follow me out of the underworld, Gilbert. I promise you, I will not look back." 

His face relaxed, and she could have sworn he took a deeper breath than he'd had in hours. 

Before leaving his bedside, she gave him one more look over. She drank in the angles of his face, his criminally long dark lashes against his cheek, the line of his neck, the chin she once thought of as so elegant. Strong. She longed to watch him over the years by his side, slight changes as time went on, his features becoming more chiseled with age. His shoulders broadening again, becoming healthy, his robust self. Anne whispered a prayer in her mind that she'd be blessed to witness it, but if this was the last image of him, so be it. She would not look back. 

She gave a nod to Bash and left the room, walked out of the house, mounted her horse, and rode back to Green Gables. She moved past the worried stares in the kitchen, keeping her head forward until she collapsed into her childhood bed. She cried every tear she had left, the sobs jolting through her to the point of utter exhaustion. She finally fell asleep, unable to do anything else. 

**~~*...*~~**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title of fic and a line from story from the song "Take Care" by Beach House which I listened to on repeat while writing. So credit where credit is due.
> 
> Let me know what you think if you're so inclined. I love feedback and I never shy away from discourse or critique. Especially if I'm new to a fandom. 
> 
> I'm also anniemar on tumblr if you're into that sort of thing.


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